by JS Gilbert
When our office switched from recyclable
cups to sustainable mugs my boss
said she never pours tea into coffee
mugs because coffee was a thoughtless
guest who never, really, leaves, like
there’s always one sock left under
the couch to be found six months later.
I shrugged because I’d never found so
much as a quarter beneath the cushions.
Jesus, too, warned against pouring new
wine into old wine skins lest they burst
and stain the carpet but my coffee
mug has never
yet
cracked.
There are few opening lines more pretentious than
‘I have a hot tub’—maybe ‘I don’t own a TV’ or
‘I read The Economist’—but it’s true and anyway
it’s for my wife’s fibromyalgia and it was on sale
and there’s no other way to explain the leaves that
become trapped and float unnoticed to the surface
sink beneath the jets lost in the flotsom to wind
between our toes and lay at the bottom of this
chemical bath dying as we relax color fading like
an astronaut without oxygen who can’t keep her
eyes open as the warnings flash 15 10 5 3 percent
red through her eyelids but she’s long since succumbed
to an isolated slumber and slipped down to death to
wind between God’s toes, a leaf in the filter but
he still knows her name.
It’s power, of a kind, to draw
the attention
ACCIDENT EXIT 93 EXPECT DELAYS
of zombied motorists with a
silent,
amber scream
FLOODING HWY 2 ALT RTE CR KK
to warn of jackknives, pileups, sinkholes,
(perhaps) transdimentional hordes
COFFEE ON CAR ROOF FULL DARK ROAST HELP
on southbound I-85.
As the boundaries of traffic form and
fade within
roving, elongated
GLORIOUS DETOUR RTE 17 EXIT 12
search lights
how bleary and half-dozed must seem
DO NOT IGNORE CHECK ENGN LIGHT ASK UNCLE JACK
the line of urgency at 3:27 AM.
How stippled, how cracked.
DID YOU HEAR THAT
in the beginning was the Word;
it has/will been/be, ever since/more.
some (words) are more
import-
signific-
relev-
ant than others, without
which the story is lost or
meaning less.
some ARE, some DO,
while some ARE/DO both while
never break-
ing
stride.
the others, though,
gild and embellish
are clutter and noise,
momentary-
ily
worthy of a roughshod draft;
unworthy, certain-
ly,
of eternity.
do they know if they
ARE or DO or do they
wait, anxious-
ly,
for the sharp, red pen?
We fill the silence with ourselves.
Afraid of absence of stillness of soundless.
The truth we hear when nothing speaks.
Yes, But
Our fear of slippery slopes
kills joy in its sleep,
ties God’s hands behind our backs,
rises from Satan’s coffee to
curl about his face as he stands
in his bathrobe watching a black
dawn loom above the trees.
Published in Strange City Digest, Winter/Spring 2021.